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Posted By J&F on 04/28/2007 10:12 PM
I agree with Librarian here, most games in tournaments are won by sportsmanship rather than victorious slaughters (and i'm pretty sure librarian said this was meant to be friendly, so i don't think he wants to be killing the hobby for other players by being a prick).

 "Remember kids, winning in rude!"

A fan of General Haig I see.

ok listen theres more to this then meats the eye the table librarian and i and every one else at the GW we go to play on a 4 by 4 foot table with so much size 2 area terrain its really easy to outmonuver guard and stay clear of las cannons and stuff + i cant remember who it was in the imp codex that said an army that rellies on heavy weoponry will be outmounouvered and an army that rellies on close combat will be shot to peices and that the two halfs must work together i think librarians list follows that its got short to medium range weoponry on his infantry and a support weopon (of sorts)

The point is that when you ask for help, and experienced players here give it, don't attack them. I don't play Guard (nor against them much), so I can't help you specifically. All I can say is take what the posters here have said and then come up with a new list that incorporates some of what they are trying to teach you and then come back and they'll critique your new list.

But please don't attack posters for giving you advice in an advice forum.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Librarian, that guard player that you are trying to emulate probably loaded way up on special weapons (something I'm not sure I see you doing) because there's no way that anyone is going to be harmed by 100 guardsmen deepstriking with flashlights. My Nurgle army wouldn't even lose a full squad if they all rapid fired! Even drop pod space marines will take traits so they can load up on double plasma guns per squad or take terminators with double assault cannons. A good balanced list has a little bit of anti-infantry and a little bit of anti-tank, and a little bit of cross over weaponry. Thats what everyone will suggest to you, and I noticed a post from someone saying that GT's or RT's are won on sportmanship vs muscle.... don't beleive it, in most tournies the majority of your scoring is battle.

This thread is comedy gold. It has it all.

People who ask for advice and then yell at you when you give it.

People who insist that an army could be played their way, regardless of how absurd it may be.

People who can't even write coherently, and even after you 'translate' it their comments still makes no sense.

People who insist that winning is not how you win a tournament

People who insist that 'tactical prowess' will completely override list design

10+ people who have less than 20 posts telling the only guy actually providing useful advice that he is wrong.

People insisting mass lasguns is more effective than mass heavy weapons.

People advocating useless, overpriced "upgrades" for no logical reason other than to take them.


I love it.

ok sure some people have less then 10 posts but that dosnt mean anything post number dosnt count for anything.

ok sure lasguns may not be as powerfull but there are alot more of them and even a marine player fails armour saves with that many shots coming at you.

yeah cause its stupid librarian actuly said he dosnt like taking heavy weopons so we should be giving advice on how to fix that sort of list not telling him to take tank heavy armys and such.

as above

this list isnt meant for tournys so stop complaining about how he dosnt take heavy weopons in infantry squads or a lemun russ instead of a baslisk

oh and if ur going to "female dog" me about this PM me and complain

Ok, let's all try and stay on topic here and help librarian make an army to how he'd like it, if he doesn't want heavy weapons we can just try and help him make an army without them. I don't think he meant to sound like he was attacking posters, he just wanted them to start giving him advice on his style of army rather than change his point of viewon it, guard can be played in more ways than just "heavy weapon and tank spam" so let's actually try and alter his army list to be something different.

Sazzlefrats has a good point on taking  more special weapons, I'm sure this can help bridge the absence of heavy weapons that people are complaining about.

PS. That comment made by Crimson Devil about General Haig seemed completely irrelevant (I was talking about good use of tactics on behalf of the player i was playing against as opposed to Haigs lack of tactics).

And the scoring for GTs and RTs has only 50% of points allocated to gaming, the other 50% is for sportsmanship and theme etc...

How's that phrase go again:

"If you can't stand the heat then get out of the..."

What was it? Oh yes.

"If you can't stand the head, then get out of the thread."

If you are unwilling to take advice on building an effective Guard list, and want to counter advice with 'but winning games doesn't win tournaments', then you have no place at Dakka. Go to Warseer. They'll love you there.

BYE

Wow. this is my first time on this forum and i find it quite musing how everyone is at each others throats in this, I think ill join in. H.B.M.C, if he wants to play his army differently, respect him for that, don't tell him that there is ONLY one way to play an army and that he MUST follow that (so far you havent contributed anything to help him with his list except for "play a different army, only use heavy weapons, not following what i say will result in bad lists blah blah blah... BYE" Librarian probably IS willing to take advice on making an effective guard list, but no one is giving him the right advice. Foil - I agree that only a handful of play styles can make a guard list win most of the time, but i personaly see potential in this list as long as its built corectly (that doesn't always mean heavy weapons, although they are a nice choice, it can mean special weapons too). Oh, and Foil, Librarian said he wanted to do drop guard, it sounded like you ahd a plan for him there, but then you switched to complaining about his preferences on heavy weapons teams, to help librarian out, why not elaborate on what you WERE going to say about drop guard armies. reading up on what J&F said: its true, read the GT layout, gaming really is only half the score! Librarian, watch how you type things as well, you seemed to flame people instead of redirecting people back to what you meant, as such you sounded like the one being the douche'. As for my two cents on the list, Librarian - chunk up on special weapons if you don't like heavy weapons, don't take ratlings, try and drop the flamers in favor of things like plasma guns and melta guns, lose the autocannons on your sentinals for things like lascannons instead (just convert your own if you cant find any at your store).

DLE

I'm generally supporting HBMC. Hoqwever, I do think that the dropping guard army of doom has merit, but only if you max out on the numbers of specials that you cram into the list. Something along these lines:

CHQ: 4 plasma/80
Platoon 1: PHQ (4 plasma), 5 guard squads (plasma), remnants (5 men, flamer)/465
Platoon 1: PHQ (4 plasma), 5 guard squads (plasma), remnants (5 men, flamer)/465
Platoon 1: PHQ (4 melta), 5 guard squads (melta), remnants (5 men, flamer)/465
Platoon 1: PHQ (4 flamers), 5 guard squads (plasma), remnants (5 men, flamer)/449

That'll put you right around 1850 (if not over...) and is a huge amount of fun to play, as there is no way possible for your opponent to kill all of your 29 (!) scoring units.

I don't see how you can advocate massed lasgun charges and not see the correlation. Your going to get the same result Haig did, lots of body bags and little to show for it.


BTW, you can be nice as pie, but you still need to win your games to place in a tournament.

I'm sorry for flaming, I just got annoyed when people were constantly telling me to change my style of play.

Posted By Librarian on 05/01/2007 5:16 PM
I'm sorry for flaming, I just got annoyed when people were constantly telling me to change my style of play.

Then why did you post the list?

I was hoping for some advice on how to do a successful drop guard list, rather than just the blanket Imperial Guard advice I was getting.

Posted By ether dude on 05/01/2007 7:23 AM
I'm generally supporting HBMC. Hoqwever, I do think that the dropping guard army of doom has merit, but only if you max out on the numbers of specials that you cram into the list. Something along these lines:

CHQ: 4 plasma/80
Platoon 1: PHQ (4 plasma), 5 guard squads (plasma), remnants (5 men, flamer)/465
Platoon 1: PHQ (4 plasma), 5 guard squads (plasma), remnants (5 men, flamer)/465
Platoon 1: PHQ (4 melta), 5 guard squads (melta), remnants (5 men, flamer)/465
Platoon 1: PHQ (4 flamers), 5 guard squads (plasma), remnants (5 men, flamer)/449

That'll put you right around 1850 (if not over...) and is a huge amount of fun to play, as there is no way possible for your opponent to kill all of your 29 (!) scoring units.

How much more specific drop guard could I get? Sure, cut an infantry squad or two to add a sentinel with improved comms.

I'll admit that was definitely drop guard specific. Thanks for that by the way. But previous to the flaming, I was just getting the same blanket advice, "take tanks", "get lascannons", etc.

It's important to make your objectives clear at the outset. Your initial post doesn't really emphasize "Drop Troops," nor does your initial list really scream drop troops at me (there's a basilisk in there, after all).

There are ways to make the all-infantry wall-of-men approach work. It's an extremely unconventional approach to Guard, expensive and painting-intensive to collect, and rarely as effective as either of the more traditional approaches (stand-and-shoot, mechanized). It also suffers from Ork complex, in that simply setting up and moving adequate numbers of men will be slow. And even if you're completely on top of your game, and the terrain is such that a shooty force won't just cut you to ribbons as you advance, and your opponent's army isn't mobile enough to just deny you any sort of engagement, you're STILL extremely sensitive to first turn issues.  As such, it's not one I typically recommend.

That said.

If it's the approach you want, you need to do a few things:
1) Trim ALL the fat. Ratlings? Gone. Hardened Vets? Gone. Vet sergeants? Gone. Your theme IS your army, in this case.

2) More men. You're looking for at least 3 platoons (min-sized). And you do want them min-sized; you'll need all the officers you can get ahold of, to bolster morale (and force your opponents to kill them off).

3) Conscripts. Cheap way to bulk up model count. It's *almost* worth it to include a single independent Commissar, just to get yourself a ld 10 30-50 man tarpit. You have to keep enemy assault troops out of there.

4) Weapons. Goodly numbers of both plasma and melta. Don't worry over-much about flamers, though one or two might as well go in there, just in case.

The problem with your initial list is simply that you went on an impulse buying-session through the Guard codex. A few ratlings won't do anything. 5 veterans (with 3 plasma guns!) won't accomplish much before they die. Veteran sergeants everywhere. Power weapons on strength 3, initiative 3 officers. A single sentinel (but no improved comms, which might have clued us in that you were considering dropping as a major tactic). A basilisk...but no indirect fire, meaning that AV 12 open-topped hull has to be exposed to enemy anti-tank fire.

Oh, and to return to the "would it be fun to play against?" question.

Lamentably, for me, no.

I don't insist on my opponent bringing a balls-to-the-wall killer optimized list of doom. I don't do that myself, outside of the Adepticon Gladiator. But your list is at least 20% pure fat (e.g., points spent on items/upgrades/units that will have zero effect on nearly any game scenario I can conceive of), and another 50% is in units specialized for 8"-12" combat (flamers, meltaguns, demo charges, etc.), but have no way of closing on a mobile enemy (beyond the uncertainties of deep striking).

I don't play this game to win. I play to compete, to pit my ability to move my toy soldiers against yours. And to show up, and discover my opponent brought Barbies instead of G.I. Joe, is something of a let down.

Nice posts Janthkin. And Etherdude if I see a guard player bring that list to the table I'm going to smack you for letting the cat out of the bag :-)

Not that I want to feed this flamefest, but after hearing some outrageous claims in this thread, I'd like to debunk the myth of "mass lasguns" as an effective strategy. In my example, I shall use the standard space marine, or "MEQ" statline. T4 and 3+ save.

Lets calculate a single BS3 lasgun shot against a T4, 3+ save model. The math goes like this: 3/6 to hit (4+), times 2/6 to wound (5+), times 2/6 to make it past the armor save (1 or 2 on a 3+). The result is about 0.0555, 5.5%, or just over 1/20.

A single lasgun in rapid fire range will have about a 1/10 chance to kill an MEQ per turn. One whole squad of guard (ten lasguns) in rapid fire range will statistically only kill a single marine per turn. Once again, statistically speaking, only one out of 20, BS3, lasgun shots will down a marine or equivalent.

Ok, now lets say by some miracle, you get 50 models into rapid fire range of an MEQ squad. According to statistics, you will only get about 6 kills!

"Mass lasguns" are not a viable tactic against any heavy infantry, especially not necrons (all the above numbers become halved due to "We'll be back!" . "Mass wounds", "Mass Meatshields", and "Mass scoring units" are strategies that are certainly worth consideration, but lasguns will never do the killing for you.

Edit: Don't forget that marine equiivalents will generally wield S4, AP5 weapons at BS4. If this is the case, each shot has about a 44% chance to kill one of your guardsmen. A ten-shot volley of bolter equivalents will statistically kill 4 or so guardsmen. In other words, unsupported light infantry always loses the shooting war to heavy infantry.